Learning design on a small scale

Unlike many other students at Ohio State University, Lindsay Rego can enjoy the country's largest campus without feeling like an anonymous face in a huge lecture hall.

Unlike many other students at Ohio State University, Lindsay Rego can enjoy the country's largest campus without feeling like an anonymous face in a huge lecture hall.

A junior industrial-design major, Rego takes most of her classes with the same 17 students.

"We work together, eat together, play together; we're like family," said Rego, a 21-year-old from Mason. "Where else would you get that in a university of more than 59,000 students?"

Unlike in most other majors at Ohio State, students must overcome several hurdles to major in one of three design areas. They first must pass several preliminary courses, take an entrance exam during winter break and turn in a portfolio of their work.

The test is aimed at determining students' creativity, drawing abilities and thinking skills. This year, students had to draw a food item and kitchen product from different perspectives and illustrate the steps involved in building an igloo without using words.

About 250 students typically take the pre-design courses, but only 54 -- 18 each in three majors -- are admitted each year, making it among OSU's most sought-after programs, officials said.

The program attracts a range of students, including people interested in art, business, engineering and science.

Ohio State plans to unveil a digital-media/computer-animation major in fall 2009; the focus already is offered to graduate students. Each year, OSU admits about 15 graduate students in four focus areas, most of whom want to hone their skills, teach or start their own design firm. The grad program takes three years.

Undergraduate students can take the entrance exam twice, and about 30 percent do.

The test helps the college identify students with the greatest potential, said Wayne Carlson, design department chairman.

The rest pick other majors but still have the option of getting a minor in design. About two dozen students have graduated with a design minor since it was introduced two years ago, and 160 others are working toward the minor.

"It pains our faculty to turn away students, but the classes are built upon students getting one-on-one attention," said Brian Stone, an associate professor of visual communication design.

Ohio State's program is one of the oldest in the country -- it's celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Unlike other schools' programs, it is not part of a larger school of art or architecture.

The students take basic courses together until the spring of their sophomore year, when they are separated into their majors. They spend their junior and senior years together working in small studios, critiquing one another's work.

"It's hard to take the criticism at first, but it makes you better," said Blake Kishler, a 20-year-old industrial-design major from Granville.

During their last two years, the students work on at least one classroom project for businesses each quarter. And they can intern or study abroad for part of their senior year.

This quarter, assistant professor Jim Arnold has his class of junior industrial design students, including Rego and Kishler, working to develop a better seat belt for Ford.

The students have talked to people about what they want in a seat belt and watched how they use them. They have looked at similar restraints on boats and climbing harnesses to get ideas of how to design them differently. And they have made sketches and models from foam and parts they have found at junkyards.

Each student will present a buckle design. Each team of students will present a larger design for an entire seat-belt restraint system. In the end, Ford might use the ideas.

The students aren't typically paid for their work, but they might be given money for materials. More important, they receive "priceless real-world experiences" that often lead to a job after graduation, officials said.

"It's not enough to say, 'I've got this great idea,' " Arnold said. "The students learn by creating, critiquing and presenting their work. They have to know how to do it all from the conception to the sales pitch."

epyle@dispatch.com

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